


Quiet Minds

by Tor_Raptor



Series: The Gravesen Chronicles [5]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Hospital, Angst, Anxiety, Child Abuse, Depression, Friendship, Gen, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Kid Avengers, Mental Illness, Social Anxiety, Suicidal Thoughts, Suicide Attempt, Teen Avengers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-31
Updated: 2020-11-03
Packaged: 2021-03-08 20:08:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,721
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27302437
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tor_Raptor/pseuds/Tor_Raptor
Summary: Before Gravesen, there was a period of light. But it was sandwiched between two places so darkBruce wished he couldn't remember them.
Relationships: Bruce Banner & Tony Stark
Series: The Gravesen Chronicles [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1925263
Comments: 46
Kudos: 48





	1. Perplexed and Frightened

**Author's Note:**

> Alright, this one's going to be short. For my own sake I had to put a limit on how long I spent in the mindset to write this because of its content. Major trigger warnings for suicidal thoughts, attempted suicide, self harm, and child abuse. I tried to keep graphic descriptions to a minimum, but when dealing with themes like these it's potentially triggering regardless of how in depth I go. Still, I did promise prequels for the major characters, and learning this backstory is crucial to understanding just how meaningful the events of Gravesen are for Bruce.

"Quiet minds cannot be perplexed or frightened but go on in fortune or misfortune at their own private pace, like a clock during a thunderstorm." –Robert Louis Stevenson, the Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

Bruce thought about this quote often. He thought about a lot of things often. Too many things. All the things, all the time. If he ever stopped thinking, then he thought about everything that might go wrong if he neglected to think hard enough and before he knew it he was thinking again. His mind was anything but quiet, and it could be _easily_ perplexed or frightened.

He envied those with quiet minds. Some of his quiet-minded classmates envied him, and when they muttered about how he _must have cheated_ to score that well, how he probably hadn't stressed over studying a day in his life because he knew it all already, or how they wished they had a mind like his so they could excel too, he wanted to tell them the truth. He would have told them the truth, that he kept his eyes so firmly fixed on his own paper during a test that his neck ached because he was terrified of being accused of cheating, stressed over studying every free minute he had because if he didn't do well in school he had _nothing_ , and how he wished he had any mind but his own so he could experience even a second of freedom from the constant noise. But that would require talking to them. And above all else, talking to his peers both perplexed _and_ frightened him.

It could be worse. Whenever the noise crescendoed to a cacophony that threatened to split Bruce's head in half, he reminded himself it could be worse. At least _he_ wasn't here to remind Bruce of his every shortcoming, to reinforce everything Bruce already told himself on a daily basis with harsh words and the lashing end of a belt. If the idea of giving up again ever crossed his mind, Bruce ran his fingers over the scars on the inside of his wrists and reminded himself that it _could be worse_.

~0~

_Bruce sat down at his desk and grabbed his homework folder from his backpack. He kept all his worksheets from the day's classes in there: incomplete in the left pocket and complete in the right pocket. Today, he had a spelling worksheet, some math problems, and another worksheet for science. In less than ten minutes he'd finished math, and spelling took only ten minutes more. Bruce always saved science homework for last because it was his favorite._

_He reached for the folder again and found the left side empty. Thinking maybe it stuck to one of the other papers, he double checked his completed work, but his science worksheet did not appear. Fear began its crawling ascent up his throat. Bruce always put homework in this folder, there was nowhere else it could be. Still, he pulled everything out of his backpack and flipped through every page of every folder and journal, hoping, hoping,_ hoping, _that it just slipped out and got lost among other things. He checked it all three times before he gave up on hope and surrendered to fear._

_They'd gotten a science worksheet in class. He knew it because he remembered the teacher passing them out and he'd written it down in his planner. Somehow, it either never ended up in his folder or it got lost. Whichever it was, Bruce didn't have it, and it was due tomorrow._

_"What am I gonna do?" he thought. He wasn't one of those kids who just lost their homework. What would his teacher think if he showed up to school without it? She'd be so disappointed. Bruce remained one of the only kids in his class—in the entire second grade, frankly—who could be relied upon to do his work and not cause trouble. Failing to do his homework would ruin that. Bruce couldn't let that happen._

_He ran downstairs to the kitchen, expecting to find Mom. Instead, Dad sat at the table, deeply engrossed in something on his laptop. Most days he was still at work at this hour. "Where's Mom?" Bruce asked._

_"Running errands," Dad said dismissively. "What do you want?"_

_"Um…" Bruce didn't want to tell him. Dad wouldn't take it seriously, would tell him that homework in second grade "Didn't matter one fucking bit" and that he should go play outside or watch TV instead of fussing about it. He never understood how much it mattered to Bruce, how much everything mattered._

_"Spill it."_

_"I lost my science homework," he admitted._

_"So?"_

_"So, I need to do it. But I don't have the worksheet."_

_"Why don't you have it?"_

_"I don't know. I must have lost track of it somehow."_

_"Then just tell your teacher that."_

_"But then she'll think I'm a slacker!"_

_"You lost your homework. Maybe you are one."_

_"I've never lost homework before, and it won't happen again," Bruce assured. "But I need to find a way to do it."_

_"Really? You need to?"_

_"Yes."_

_"I'll tell you what. You got friends in this class?"_

_The real answer was no. Bruce was friendly with the kids who sat near him, but he wouldn't call them his friends. Acquaintances, maybe. But he didn't want to see what would happen if he admitted that to his father. So he lied and said yes._

_"Call one of them and ask if they can email you a picture of the work."_

_"I don't have an email address," Bruce pointed out._

_"Then get their parents to email it to me."_

_"I don't know their phone numbers."_

_"The student directory is in the cabinet by the phone. If you know their name, you can easily find their number. Now go," Dad prompted. Swallowing the dread rising in his throat, Bruce moved to the cabinet and rifled through it. This bad situation had somehow morphed into a nightmare. Talking on the phone was not something Bruce did on a regular basis—because it terrified him. He'd answer if it was Mom calling him, but dialing someone else and waiting for them to pick up made his brain riot. The idea of calling one of his schoolmates scared him senseless._

_A parent would almost certainly be the one to pick up, someone Bruce had never met, and he'd have to explain his stupid mistake and then explain it again to the kid. What if they didn't have it either and he had to do the whole thing all over again, with more new people? What if they refused, demanding Bruce suffer the consequences of his own negligence? What if he read the email address wrong and he went through all that just for the worksheet to get lost in cyberspace?_

_All these thoughts crossed his mind in the time it took him to locate the directory. He thought of a classmate he was pretty sure at least knew his name and flipped through to find him. His gaze rested on the ten digit number listed with the name and froze there until his vision blurred with tears._

_"What the hell is wrong with you?" Dad questioned when Bruce's sniffling became audible. "That's a directory, not an obituary."_

_"I can't do it," Bruce proclaimed._

_"Can't do what? Make a phone call? Are you kidding me?"_

_Bruce shook his head despondently._

_"Pick up the goddamn phone right this minute and get it done." For an instant, Dad scared him even more than the prospect of making a call, so Bruce picked the phone up off the hook. The second it entered his hand, it took over as the more threatening entity. Bruce was stuck between his intransigent father and the howling abyss of the unknown lurking just beyond the pressing of a few buttons._

_"What are you waiting for? Call your friend. It's not that difficult."_

_"Yes it is," Bruce protested. Nothing he'd ever done came close to matching this task in difficulty._

_"Only you would say making a phone call is difficult," Dad sighed. "Do you want your homework or not?"_

_"Yes," Bruce spluttered through more tears._

_"Then make the goddamn call."_

_"I can't!" he cried, and bolted out of the room. The phone fell from his hand and clattered to the floor. Dad tore after him with a growl and had his hand fisted in the back of Bruce's shirt before he even made it past the first step. He whipped Bruce around and smacked him across the face so hard his ears rang._

_"If you don't get back in there and pick up that phone, so help me," he didn't finish the statement. He didn't need to. For a microsecond, Bruce considered taking the phone and calling nine-one-one, but that would require talking to a stranger on the phone and Bruce's inability to do that was what got him into this mess in the first place. Bruce didn't move back towards the kitchen, so his father dragged him up the stairs by his shirt and shoved him into the master bedroom. He knew what was coming before Dad disappeared into the closet, and part of him knew he deserved it. That knowledge did nothing to quell the fear that arose at the sight of the glimmering belt buckle. Bruce turned around with a resigned sigh before Dad even told him to do so and bit his lip to brace himself for the inevitable pain._

_By the time it was over, Bruce was shaking, still crying, and possibly bleeding. "Get out of my sight," Dad commanded, tone low and threatening. Bruce scampered back to his room and curled up under his covers, too rattled to care if he got blood on his sheets._

_If he'd only been responsible and remembered his stupid science homework, none of this would've happened._

~0~

It went on much like that for the next six years. Mom knew about it. She dressed Bruce's wounds when his father really lost control, but she didn't do anything to stop it. She _couldn't_. Dad threatened her with the same treatment if she breathed a word to anyone. Bruce didn't blame her. Mostly he blamed himself.

Things changed when he gave up.

They investigated his old wounds and scars, the ones they could tell weren't self-inflicted, and they figured it out. Mom filled in anything they couldn't decipher just by looking at him, her concern for Bruce outweighing her fear of her husband. Fortunately, the authorities got to him before he could get to Mom. If one good thing could come out of this lowest of lows, Bruce was glad it was his mother's freedom.

Things were good, right after that. Mom got a new job and when Bruce was released, they packed up all their things and moved from Ohio to New York City, where Mom had always wanted to live. Neither of them wanted to spend another second in the house which contained nothing but memories of Dad. Bruce feared that living in a busy city might overwhelm his anxiety—he knew that was the term for it now—but the anonymity of walking through massive crowds of people actually had somewhat of the opposite effect. He wasn't expected to say hi to people he met on the street like he was in the suburbs, and he knew nobody paid him any attention so long as he kept his head down like everyone else. Remaining invisible was easy in a city where everyone had seen it all before.

Mom's happiness bled into Bruce, and between that and the medications he felt better than he'd ever felt in his entire life. The perpetual stomachache he'd had for as long as he could remember abated, leaving room for something warm and shaped like joy, and while he knew he could never achieve true silence, the volume in his mind reduced to something comparable.

Bruce started thinking about that quote the first time he read it, in his tenth grade English class. He tore through the Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, racing ahead of their assigned reading schedule because he loved it so much and couldn't wait to witness the story reach its resolution. Mom bought him his own copy so he could highlight and scribble notes in the margins, and so he could read it again and again after he returned the school's copy when they moved on to the next unit. What it was about this particular story that captured his fascination, he couldn't pinpoint. Maybe it was the idea that a single person could contain two drastically different personalities.

It helped him rationalize his father's behavior, in a way. He imagined that alcohol had been the potion that transformed Dad from a normal, hard-working man into a raging beast intent only on beating Bruce into submission. It wasn't Bruce's fault, but the potion's. When he managed to think about it like that instead of blaming himself for setting Dad off with his incapability to function like a normal human, he felt better.

He should've known it wouldn't last.

Bruce started his junior year of high school full of…not hope, but at least not the same sort of dejection that had heralded the beginning of every school year before Dad left. His anxiety had always spiraled in the first few weeks of a new school year as he adjusted to new teachers, classmates, and routines. It wasn't as bad this time around, but he could still tell that the volume in his head ratcheted up a few notches.

Junior year was more difficult and much more hyper-focused on preparing students for the future, particularly regarding college. Bruce studied harder than ever because grades mattered now more than ever before. AP Chemistry and AP Physics were supposedly the hardest courses offered by the school, but nobody would know that just by looking at Bruce's grades. The subjects just clicked, and that combined with his relentless study schedule ensured he performed well on every assignment handed their way.

Over the previous two years here, Bruce had built a reputation as the quiet genius. He never talked to anyone about his grades (or anything, frankly) and he didn't participate in class—unless it was mandatory and he forced himself to speak while simultaneously quelling a panic attack—but whoever sat behind him must have caught a glimpse whenever tests were handed back and spread the word. Bruce didn't contribute to gossip, but he soaked it up like a sponge, listening quietly in hallways and classrooms. That's how he learned that many of his peers harbored jealousy for what they thought was his perfect, infallible brain. If only they knew just how imperfect it was.


	2. Chief of Sufferers

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Having a theme for chapter titles is way easier when there's only two chapters to name.

"Hey Bruce." He froze halfway through putting his notebook in his backpack since the bell had just rung to signal the end of the class period. Classmates rarely addressed him directly like this, but Bruce didn't mind because he had little clue how to react when they did. Steeling himself, he turned to face the direction of the voice and saw Betty Ross standing in front of him with her textbook clutched to her chest.

Only then did he realize he should probably respond beyond staring to indicate he'd heard her, so he stuttered out, "Yes?"

"So, my study group's been working together to prepare for the midterm, but admittedly we're all kind of lost," she explained sheepishly, brushing a loose strand of hair behind her ear. "You always seem to know exactly what's going on in class, so we were wondering if you could join us and help us figure out how to do everything we just learned, since it's going to be on the test."

Bruce stood there like a deer in headlights, synapses firing at a hundred miles an hour but generating no productive thoughts. Hydrogen. Helium. Lithium. Beryllium. Boron. Carbon. The periodic table elements drifted through his head reflexively, one of his grounding mechanisms for panic attacks. What could he say? If he said no, they'd all think he was a rude smartass who thought he was above taking time to help out his peers. But if he said yes, he would doom himself to further interaction with Betty and a bunch of other kids in his class, and there was no telling how deep a hole Bruce could dig if he introduced himself to a situation like that.

Betty looked at him expectantly, her expression starting to shift from neutral to concerned the longer he remained silent. Bruce forced himself to take a deep breath and opted to dodge answering the question. He readjusted his glasses on his face and instead asked a question of his own: "Why me?"

She blushed and tucked that same errant strand of hair back behind her ear. "Because you're easily the smartest kid in the class." The color in her cheeks darkened even more, and Bruce felt his own face fill with a similar embarrassed heat.

"Um…thank you." Bruce internally cursed himself for saying something so awkward. While her statement may have been true, that absolutely did not translate into an ability to teach other people. Hopefully, she would determine that from his complete inability to even hold this conversation and retract the offer. That would at least be better than Bruce having to reject it himself.

"Please, will you help? Midterms are totally stressing me out, and having an extra brain in the study group—especially one like yours—might help."

This was flattery. Bruce recognized it despite never having heard it directed at him before. It filled him with a combination of nerves and—was that a hint of pride? They wanted his help so badly they were willing to extort it out of him via a pretty girl. Either that or this was an elaborate setup to prank him or something. Having never received much of either kind of attention from his peers, Bruce could not figure out which one this was. And if there was one thing that magnified his anxiety, it was not being able to figure something out.

"I don't think I'd be much use," he admitted, finally spitting out something instead of gaping at her like she'd just asked him to run away to India with her.

"I disagree," she said sweetly. Now she twirled that loose strand of hair about her finger instead of trying to push it away.

"Then you don't know me." Bruce flushed an even deeper shade of pink and kept his eyes fixed on the floor off to Betty's left.

"You're right, I don't. But I'd like to." She tried to meet his eye, but underestimated just how determined he was not to reciprocate. He feared he would completely lose control of himself if he looked and saw just how harshly she must be judging him right now. What kind of seventeen-year-old boy couldn't even hold a conversation with a girl his age? Certainly not the kind Betty would want helping her and her friends study for their chemistry midterm. "What do you say?" she asked.

He sensed she might actually give up if he continued to resist answering the question. Would that be preferable to giving an answer he might regret? Probably not. "I—I can't," he stammered. Before she could interrogate him as to why, he fled without looking back, regret and shame filling him with every step. Dad's voice shouted in the back of his mind, telling him how pathetic he was for failing to hold a simple conversation. A toddler could have done better. The worst part: he was _right_.

For the first time since Dad left, the thought of giving up crossed Bruce's mind.

When he got home, he disappeared into his room and idly flipped through his worn copy of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, hoping to stumble upon a passage that might assuage some of the self-loathing and hopelessness pulsing inside of him like pus in an infected wound. Lying on his back with the book above his head, Bruce's sleeves slid up his arms just far enough for him to see the scars. He hadn't worn short sleeves since he got them, because the idea of someone seeing them and asking him about them scared him more than their existence in the first place. They existed because Bruce reached a nadir of misery and saw no way out, but _he_ still existed because there was a way out, and he'd taken it. Was it really possible that he'd somehow looped back to that place from which he'd barely escaped?

It didn't make any sense. Dad was gone, so Bruce suffered no physical and emotional pain from which he wanted to get away. He was on medication which was designed specifically to keep these feelings at bay, and he was succeeding in his quest to maintain his grades during the hardest academic year of high school. There was no logical reason to give up now, yet he still thought about it.

Who would he hurt if he did it? His classmates wouldn't mind if their staunchest competition for class rank vanished. Bruce didn't exactly have any friends that would miss him. The only person he could think of was Mom, but even she might benefit from his permanent absence. No more refilling medications, no more coming home to find him in the throes of a panic attack because he'd emailed a teacher with a question about something inconsequential and realized too late there was a glaring typo in it, and no more worrying about how he'd ever find a place in a world so dependent on interpersonal communication.

He didn't do it. Not at that moment. But he did use his 'enviable' brain to consider how he would do it.

Cyanide. In biology class, they once read an article about the Chicago Tylenol Murders, when someone had snuck cyanide into bottles of Tylenol and seven people died. That was the reason all medications came sealed the way they did now. Cyanide rendered the electron transport chain within the mitochondria unable to function, meaning no matter how much oxygen a person inhaled, it couldn't be used to generate ATP, and all cellular processes requiring energy shut down.

Arsenic. It was the go-to in all the old murder mystery novels. Element number thirty three, atomic mass approximately seventy five atomic mass units.

Carbon monoxide. A simple molecule with a carbon atom triple-bonded to an oxygen atom. It would take a while, but he'd heard it was painless.

Every day he told himself it would get better, but of course simply telling himself that did nothing to actually improve the situation. Betty Ross gave him strange, almost pitying looks, whenever she saw him around school. He didn't know what to do. If he told Mom he felt like before, he'd only dredge up memories of Dad and make her worry even more than she did on a daily basis. He knew being a single mother was one of the most difficult positions in the world to hold, and it was his responsibility to shoulder his own burden. But it was so _heavy_.

There was no inciting incident. No one straw broke the proverbial camel's back. He aced his chemistry and physics midterms, even got a personal congratulations from his teacher when she handed it back to him. He should've been happy. Instead he felt nothing. Hollow. Aimless. Only after that did he recognize that he hadn't experienced anything that could be considered joy in months. Looking back, the past weeks had been filled with nothing more than stark apathy, with anxiety attacks being the only thing to ever dare to break the monotony. Bruce found himself sitting at his desk one day, studying for an upcoming physics test, and was struck with an overwhelming sense of _why bother_?

Neither cyanide, arsenic, nor carbon monoxide were immediately available, so he resorted to whatever he could find in their medicine cabinet, hoping it would be less messy than last time. He remembered the day Mom came to visit him smelling like ash, and, when Bruce asked, explaining that she'd burned the rug where she found him that day. Maybe she'd burn his body with the same confident purpose.

~0~

But there was no body to burn. Apparently suicide was another thing Bruce failed miserably at even with practice. That was his first coherent thought, and his second coherent thought was about how _disturbing_ the first one was. Then, paradoxically, he found himself laughing. It didn't last long, morphing quickly into stunned, painful silence, but he laughed nonetheless. God, what was wrong with him?

Mom was there. That was the third thing he thought. And then the fourth thing: "I wish she didn't have to see this." He remembered how much she'd fretted the first time, believing it was all her fault for not protecting him from the wrath of her husband. Hopefully, she wouldn't blame herself at all this time. The blame for this rested entirely on Bruce's shoulders, as always. His fifth thought, a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde quote: "If I am the chief of sinners, I am the chief of sufferers also." Many people believed that an attempt on any life, including one's own, constituted a mortal sin. But those who found themselves in a dark enough place to try couldn't care less. The possibility of Hell or oblivion frightened them less than the prospect of continuing another day in the real world.

"Why?" His mother must have noticed that he'd awakened, her whispered utterance piercing the silence of the hospital room. "Why didn't you tell me?"

Bruce didn't know how to answer that question. The truth of the matter was he hadn't told her because he didn't want her to worry about him, but it was far too late for that now. Maybe he'd thought that telling her would make it all the more real, that he'd lose the ability to pretend things would get better on their own. Either way, he'd lost that ability now. In reality, there was no rational explanation for why Bruce hadn't confessed. But then again, as he'd learned the first time around, nothing about this disease was rational.

"I'm sorry," he said instead. Because it was true, he was sorry for all the pain and strife he'd caused her since the day he was born. If it weren't for him, she would've led a much easier life.

"I could've helped you if you only told me it had gotten this bad," she said despondently. Bruce could tell she'd been crying, and that she was about to start again.

"I didn't want to be helped," he admitted, voice hoarse with the realization. "I just wanted it to be over."

"Oh Bruce, I'm so sorry. I should've noticed you were struggling. I feel like I've failed as a mother."

"No," he assured her. "You haven't failed. I just never gave you much opportunity to succeed."

He'd intended that remark to make her feel better, but it only made her start crying for real now. Bruce thought he probably would've cried too if he hadn't been this despairingly empty. What had she ever done to deserve this? An abusive husband and a son who couldn't even keep his own head above water. He wished his brain were wired correctly, if not for himself, then for her.

~0~

While he could never truly fix the inner workings of his brain, the team at this hospital certainly wanted to try to get him as close to functioning as they could. The head psychiatrist, Dr. Sam Wilson, with his kind smile and intent gaze, took on Bruce's case. Where Bruce completely lacked faith that things could improve, Dr. Wilson had it in spades. They adjusted his medication dosage, rendering him nauseous and exhausted, but he knew it was necessary to keep his mind in a good enough place for therapy to work.

In addition, per the advice of his doctors and therapists, he started keeping a routine. Bruce always functioned better with routine. Some of his worst anxiety attacks had been triggered by sudden changes in routine such as pop quizzes or last-minute dinner invitations from his dad's work buddies. He took his meds at the same time every day down to the minute and took a walk every morning along the same route throughout the hospital. At first, a nurse had to accompany him because he was still a suicide risk, but eventually they lifted that restriction and he wandered the hospital on his own. Stopping by the NICU was his favorite part of the journey. They had a window for new parents to look at their babies, and Bruce used it too, watching their little chests rise and fall and wishing he had as little on his mind as a newborn. Focusing on that wish helped him with meditation, a skill he was working on with another therapist here, and he tried to quiet his mind and narrow his thought process to just breathing instead of the thousand things he constantly worried about.

School helped with routine too. Their teacher the Ancient One was just the sort of scary competent that Bruce expected from a college professor, but he loved learning from her. There were other kids in his class: Carol, Quill, Thor, and sometimes Bucky. On his first day of class, they said hi to him and he managed to say hello back, but he made it rather obvious that he was painfully shy. They didn't force him to chat with them, which Bruce appreciated. He set a goal for himself of spending more time with them as soon as he felt comfortable. Before bed every night, he read one of the many books his mom had brought him. Reading, fiction and non-fiction alike, also provided an escape from the stress of everyday life.

In their sessions, Dr. Wilson started, as most people in his field had been trained to do, by building rapport. He asked Bruce about things like hobbies and favorite school subjects, expertly interweaving inquiries about his family life and social network—not that there was much to talk about when it came to that second one. Bruce knew Dr. Wilson must have access to his records from back in Ohio, so he didn't need Bruce to recount his life with his father for informative purposes. It was for Bruce to confront that era of his life and force those memories to relinquish control over his current mindset.

"He used to beat me when I was too anxious to do something he wanted me to do," Bruce sighed, remembering the terror that would overcome him when he knew his spiraling had pushed Dad over the edge. "And a part of me still feels like I deserved it."

"Why do you think that is?"

He shrugged. "They were silly things like making a phone call or going to one of his friends' houses for dinner. I made his life a lot more difficult by being unable to just go along with those things. My mom's too. She's been through so much because of me."

"Because of something that _happens_ to you," Dr. Wilson corrected. He made it clear that Bruce and his anxiety and depression were not one complete, singular entity. Bruce tried to believe that, but it was hard to erase years of conditioning.

"I just want to be able to have a conversation with someone without feeling like I'm driving a car at eighty miles an hour with no brakes," he stated. "The only person I can talk to without completely overthinking it is my mom. And you I guess."

"What kinds of thoughts prevent you from having easy conversation with less familiar people?"

"I'm just constantly worried that I'll say something completely stupid, or offend someone, or start talking and be unable to stop until they look at me like I'm insane."

"Can you think of anything you might be able to think about instead?" he suggested. "What if, instead of thinking about how a conversation can go wrong, you actively try to consider how it can go right?"

"Sounds hard," Bruce said with a huff.

"I know. These things are difficult, especially at first. Like any skill, it takes practice."

"Okay."

He asked Bruce which sorts of conversations he found the most difficult, and for the next several sessions they started with a practice conversation during which Dr. Wilson pretended to be someone else and Bruce focused on positive outcomes. Sometimes he even said them out loud to reinforce the idea. Whether this would carry over into actual conversation with peers or other strangers, Bruce didn't know. He did, however, find out.

Bruce set out on his daily walk one morning in mid-March, expecting today to be just like any other day here. Occasionally, he'd run into another one of the kids on the ward and maybe they'd say a polite hello, but they never paid him much attention. When he encountered the young stranger in the hallway, he expected the same almost-dismissal from him. Afraid of coming across as sullen and rude, Bruce blurted out an awkward greeting to the unfamiliar face, and he responded kindly. Somehow, it morphed into an entire conversation, one which Bruce stumbled his way through with more grace than he ever thought possible. He was skeptical of Dr. Wilson's advice and practice helping at all, yet here he was talking to a kid his age like it was no big deal. Bruce could have squealed with joy.

Much to Bruce's surprise, the kid, Tony, asked if he could tag along. Nobody had ever offered to join Bruce on his daily walk before, and he found the idea that someone was not only willing but asking to spend more time in his presence rather heartwarming. Inexplicably, Bruce found talking to Tony just a bit easier than talking to anyone else except Dr. Wilson or his own mother. He was the first person here who treated Bruce like a potential friend, and for the first time in far too long, a flickering warmth erupted in his chest. Hope.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope this ending at least somewhat makes up for the first part of this prequel. I didn't realize until I started writing it just how heavy this story would be. Our next leg of this backstory journey will take us to Bucky. I actually wrote his right after Natasha's, but I wanted to save it for later because it's one of my favorites. His and Steve's are such a unit that I have to post them back-to-back. Hope to see you there!

**Author's Note:**

> In the comics, Bruce's father was actually so violent he killed Bruce's mom, but there was no way I was going to bring that to life. I've learned so much about comic books since I started listening to some MCU podcasts and as much as they're considered 'lesser reading' or 'just for kids' there's some really heavy stuff in there.


End file.
